LeMieux goes on attack at GOP Senate candidates forum

Mack, McCalister field questions, ignore opponents at non-debate

February 19, 2012|By DARA KAM, Palm Beach Post

TALLAHASSEE — It wasn't a debate, and the three GOP U.S. Senate candidates were in the same room at times, but they didn't appear on stage together at an atypical Florida Federation of Republican Women forum Sunday afternoon.

U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV and retired Army Col. Mike McCalister fielded questions from the audience of die-hard Republican ladies — many dressed in red — and gave opening and closing statements without referring to their opponents by name.

But George LeMieux, trailing in the polls to Mack, pointedly bashed his Fort Myers foe before, during and after the two-hour forum.

LeMieux questioned Mack's character and repeatedly linked him to incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson as a "career politician." Mack was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2000 and has served in Congress for eight years.

"The greatest threat to our country is not liberal ideology. It's people who make their career in politics," began LeMieux, who served for 16 months alongside Nelson two years ago after being appointed to fill in for retiring U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez by then-Gov. Charlie Crist.

"We are not going to beat Bill Nelson with another career politician," LeMieux said.

A deeply tanned and relaxed Mack instead played to the general election, tying Nelson to President Obama and jeering them both for shuttering the space shuttle program and killing more than 1,000 NASA-related jobs in Florida. In 1986, then-U.S. Rep. Nelson flew as a "payload specialist" on the Space Shuttle Columbia.

"He forced his way onto the space shuttle. Now he wants to refer to himself as an astronaut. Give me a break," Mack said. "He wasn't an astronaut. He cut the line by being a member of Congress."

Mack promoted his "penny plan" that he said would balance the federal budget within 10 years. It calls for spending cuts of 1 percent throughout the federal budget every year for the next six years.

LeMieux called Mack's proposal simplistic and said that "we can't cut by one percent and get there."

Some of the loudest applause went to Plant City businessman McCalister in his closing remarks.

McCalister, who has never held public office before, is the underdog to his two better-known and better-funded opponents.

"You are not hiring a fund-raiser. This is not about any party chosen one, or who's turn is it, or what is someone's next job," McCalister said.

Before leaving the Hotel Duval, where the forum was held, Mack responded to reporters' questions about a recent report in The Miami Herald detailing his past financial problems.

Those problems include property liens filed against him, an overdrawn bank account and loans from his father and namesake, Connie Mack III, that paid his income taxes after his 2004 congressional election.

Mack blamed his financial woes on a messy divorce in 2005 and said he could not remember how much money he borrowed from his dad.

"Did I borrow money from my father? Yeah. But if anybody has been through a divorce, they recognize that it's difficult and it's hard and it takes a while to get your financial house back in order. And that's exactly what I did," Mack said.